Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 12

Simon looked puzzled. “What kind of bad thing?”
Emma shook her head. “Just—if she doesn’t come back when she’s supposed to—”
Simon looked at her with troubled eyes, but before he could say anything, Jia stepped forward and began to speak.
* * *
“Shadowhunters die young,” said someone in the crowd. Julian didn’t recognize the man: He was probably in his early forties, with thick black eyebrows. He wore a patch on his gear with the symbol of the Scholomance on it, but little else differentiated him from the dozens of other people who had come up to Julian to tell him they were sorry his sister was dead.
“But fifteen—” The man shook his head. Gladstone, Julian recalled. His last name was Gladstone. “Robert lived a full life. He was a distant cousin of mine, you know. But what happened to your sister should never have happened. She was only a child.”
Mark made a strangled noise behind Julian. Julian said something polite to send Gladstone on his way. Everything felt distant, muffled, as if he or the world had been wrapped in cotton padding.
“I didn’t like him,” said Dru, after Gladstone had gone. The skin under her eyes was shiny and tight where tears had left traces that couldn’t be washed away.
It was as if there were two Julians. One was Julian Before, the Julian who would have reached over to comfort Dru, ruffle her hair. Julian Now didn’t. He remained motionless as the crowd started to surge apart to make way for the funeral procession, and saw Helen lift Tavvy up into her arms.
“He’s seven,” he said to her. “He’s too old to be carried everywhere.”
She gave him a half-surprised, half-reproachful look but said nothing. The Silent Brothers were walking between them with their biers, and the Blackthorn family stilled as the air filled with the chant of the Nephilim.
“Ave atque vale, Livia Blackthorn. Hail and farewell.”
Dru jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Aline put an arm around her. Julian looked for Ty. He couldn’t stop himself.
Mark had gone over to Ty and was talking to him; Kit stood beside him, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched, altogether wretched. Ty himself was staring at Livvy’s bier, a spot of red burning on each of his cheeks. On the way down from the city, he had peppered Julian with questions: Who touched her in the Silent City? Did they wash the blood off her? Did they brush her hair? Did they take her necklace? Did they let you have her clothes? Who picked the dress for her to be buried in? Did they close her eyes before they tied the silk over them? until Julian had been exhausted and near snapping.
Ladders had been placed beside the pyres, each one a massive stack of logs and kindling. A Silent Brother took Livvy’s body and began to climb the ladder. When he reached the top, he laid her body down; at the second pyre, a Silent Brother was doing the same with Robert Lightwood’s corpse.
Diana had also gone to stand beside Ty. There was a white flower tucked into her collar, pale against her dark skin. She said something quietly to him, and Ty looked up at her.
Julian ached inside, a physical ache, as if he’d been punched in the stomach and was just now getting his breath back. He could feel the bloody cloth tied around his wrist, like a circle of fire.
Emma. He looked for her in the crowd, saw her standing beside Simon. Cristina had come to stand with them. The ladders had been drawn away, and the Silent Brothers stepped forward with their lit torches. Their fire was bright enough to illuminate even the daylight scene. Emma’s hair sparked and caught its brilliance as the Silent Brothers took their places around the pyres.
“These flames, this burning,” said Mark, who had appeared at Julian’s side. “In the Wild Hunt we practiced sky burial.”
Julian glanced at him. Mark was flushed, his pale curls disordered. His mourning runes had been applied with care and precision, though, which meant he hadn’t done them himself. They were beautiful and delicately done—Cristina’s work.
“We would leave bodies at the tops of glaciers or high trees, for the birds to pick clean,” Mark said.
“How about you not suggest that to anyone else at this funeral,” said Julian.
Mark winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t always know the right thing to say.”
“When in doubt, don’t say anything,” Julian said. “Literally, it’s better if you don’t talk at all.”
Mark gave him the same look Helen had before—half hurt and half surprise—but before he could say anything, Jia Penhallow, in ceremonial robes of dazzling snow white, began to speak.
“Fellow Shadowhunters,” she said, her rich voice carrying across the Imperishable Fields. “A great tragedy has come to us. One of our most faithful servants of the Clave, Robert Lightwood, was slain in the Council Hall, where our Law has always prevailed.”
“Good job not mentioning he was a traitor,” muttered someone in the crowd.
It was Zara. A hissing spurt of giggles erupted around her, like a teapot exploding. Her friends, Manuel Villalobos, Samantha Larkspear, and Jessica Beausejours, stood around her in a tight circle.
“I can’t believe they’re here.” It was Emma. Somehow she had come up beside Julian. He didn’t remember it happening, but reality seemed to be flickering in and out like a camera shutter opening and closing. She looked slightly taken aback when Julian didn’t reply, but she stalked off into the crowd, stiff-arming Gladstone out of the way.
“Also one of our youngest and most promising Shadowhunters was murdered, her blood spilled in front of us all,” said Jia as Emma reached Zara and her friends. Zara jumped back slightly, then tried to hide her loss of poise with a glare.
Emma wouldn’t care one way or another, Julian thought, about Zara’s poise. She was gesturing at Zara, and then at the Blackthorns and Ty, as Jia’s voice rang out over the meadow:
“We will not let these deaths go unpunished. We will not forget who was responsible. We are warriors, and we will fight, and fight back.”
Zara and her friends were looking mulish—all but Manuel, who was smiling a sideways smile that under other circumstances would have given Julian the creeps. Emma turned and walked away from them. Her expression was grim.
Still, Zara had stopped talking, which was something.
“They are gone,” said Jia. “The Nephilim have lost two great souls. Let Raziel bless them. Let Jonathan Shadowhunter honor them. Let David the Silent remember them. And let us commend their bodies to the necropolis, where they will serve forever.”
The Consul’s voice had softened. Everyone was looking toward her, even the children like Tavvy, Rafe, and Max, so everyone saw her expression change and darken. She spoke the next words as if they tasted bitter in her mouth.
“And now, our new Inquisitor wants to say a few words.”
Horace Dearborn stepped forward; Julian hadn’t noticed him until that moment. He wore a white mourning robe and a suitably grave expression, though there seemed to be a sneer behind it, like a shadow behind glass.
Zara was grinning openly, and more of her friends from the Scholomance had gathered near her. She gave her father a little wave, still grinning, and Manuel’s smirk spread until it covered most of his face.
Julian saw the nausea in Isabelle’s and Simon’s expressions, the horror on Emma’s face, the anger on Magnus’s and Alec’s.
He strained to feel what they felt, but he couldn’t. He felt nothing at all.
* * *
Horace Dearborn took a long moment to survey the crowd. Kit had gleaned enough from the others to know that Zara’s father was an even worse bigot than she was and that he’d been named the new Inquisitor by a majority of the Council, all of whom seemed more scared of the Unseelie Court and the threat of Downworlders than they were of investing a clearly evil man with power.
Not that Kit found any of this surprising. Just depressing.
Ty, beside him, didn’t seem to be looking at Horace at all. He was staring up at Livvy, or the little of her they could see—she was a scrap of white at the top of a tall pile of kindling wood. As he looked at his sister, he drew his right index finger across the back of his left hand, over and over; otherwise he was motionless.